The present invention relates to cable continuity testers and cable continuity testing.
In many situations, continuity testing involves using a digital or analog ohmmeter connected across positive and negative terminals of a circuit to measure the resistance and, in turn, determine the continuity or lack thereof in the circuit. Digital multimeters and ohmmeters are not, however, always practical or effective when testing multi-conductor cables. For example, a technician using an analog ohmmeter connects a first probe to a conductor on one side of a cable and places a second probe across the conductors on a second side of the cable to determine if adjacent conductors in the cable have shorted or are open circuited. The procedure is then repeated for each of the remaining conductors in the cable. Testing of this variety is commonly performed on, for example, hard drive cables and transmission control units (TCU). The procedure can be very time consuming and prone to error, depending on the number of conductors in the cable. As an example, a three-conductor cable includes a total of 8 combinations and 16 permutations of conductors that need to be tested, and the number of combinations and permutations of conductors increases considerably as the number of conductors increases.